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A Week in Tokyo 61

So much has happened since I got back from Singapore. Picked out about 360 photos for this post and had to whittle everything down to 80 ^^; Life is busy as usual but hope things slow down a wee bit as I take a break after Season 1 of Culture Japan which finishes on the 2nd of Jan 2011.
Season 2 of Culture Japan will probably start in April and before then I want to get the ball rolling on some products that I'm developing and also the Mirai Millennium Universe.

First photo - out n about on the trains. These are the priority seats. Do sit on em if you need to give your legs a rest but do please offer your seat to the needy when they come along.

The decision to use the Lumix GH2 for filming was indeed a great investment which has served us well over the past couple of months. He we have Cameraman Shimada-san and Sound Engineer Komoda-san setting up the equipment before filming.

In the office we film the AmiAmi Top 10 Ranking. One thing I've learned while directing Culture Japan is that lighting makes a huge difference - before I thought one could just turn up the exposure on the camera. Am looking for some decent LED portable lights to take around with us. All the lighting in the office you see here is on rental.

Richard and I find other uses for bedsheets and dakimakura covers.
Richard joined AmiAmi through dannychoo.com after I posted the job description a while ago. He now looks after all the English language orders and plays with figures all day long.

Many food places in Japan will have a stack of magazines for you to read through while you nom your noms. Much of the reading material is manga and some of it includes gravure idol photos to help your meal taste a but more juicy?

At Azamiyuko-sensei's gaff filming "How to draw Manga" for Culture Japan. Here she's in the middle of drawing FlameBurst Mirai for Samurai Generations. The reason why I get my illustrators to draw the characters nekkid is so that we can draw on different sets of clothes after - makes a lot of sense and saves a load of moolah.

For the Shibuya Tour with Elly we got the local authorities to send us some photos of Shibuya which were taken many moons ago. This photo was taken in 1952 (Showa 52). There used to be a cable car running over Shibuya Crossing.

I love Japanese carparks. The cars move sideways on a conveyor belt and then sink into the floor. When your car comes along, you get in and backup onto the turntable in the floor which then spins round to let you out. Do they have carparks like this in your neck of the woods?

It costs money to get rid of large non-combustible items so occasionally you will see stuff outside ones property with a note saying "Please take."
This is what we do when we want to get rid of furniture or electronic equipment. If nobody takes it then we go to the convenience store to pay for a waste disposal sticker and call the local ward to pick up.

What do you do when you got huge stuff like this to trow away? Would your garbage collector just take it with the rest of the rubbish?

Getting rid of boxes for stuff that I'm most likely to keep for a very long time. In Japan, the furniture moving companies take great care when moving stuff for you and will even provide special cases for figures and wot not so keeping boxes for a move is unnecessary.

Dropping of a visitor at Narita airport. Cant wait for more international flights to start flying from Haneda Airport which is much closer to central Tokyo. If you are flying into Tokyo then try to get a flight which comes into Haneda instead.

This the turntable that we use for filming figures on Culture Japan. We've stuck about 1.5 kilos on it before and it still works. Runs on batteries though - want one that runs on USB so I can have it plugged in all day.

December 2010 is when the figma Mirai Suenaga went up for pre-order. Good Smile Company have shown us many prototype figures in the past which still have not made it to the production line so you can probably guess that *a lot* of effort goes into getting a character made into a figure. As you can imagine, I'm most pleased indeedee! Thanks to all comrades out there who made this happen ^o^

End Of Year cleaning - pets out to dry after a dip in the washing machine. Have always wondered how often pet owners give their pets a wash. And no I'm not talking about pet dolphins as they should be washed daily at least.

Yes - Chris is still alive. He works at home so I hardly see him but have him come in to meet Ken who is working on some iPhone stuff for us. Ken recently accumulated over 1 million downloads for his Photo Mess app which is free from the App Store.

The first floor office has hardly any sunlight which is one of the reasons why I've been working up on the 3rd floor a lot of late. Find out more about the poster on the wall in the Sonico and Mirai post ^o^
Previous "A Week in Tokyo" posts below.